Structure and Todorov

I tend to want to tear apart these critical essays, seeking to critique them and to critique them harshly, but with Todorov's essay on the structural analysis of narrative, I saw that his argument was convincing and he did not neglect the arguments that might be risen against his piece.

Todorov truly believes in his structural approach to literature, and I think I understand the importance of this linguistic, scientific-like approach. At first I thought Todorov might be alluding to the Romantics in his exaltation of the literature itself. I know the Romantics stress importance in the Poet, but there is also this idea that the poem-- the work of literature is Truth and Beauty, and it will bring enlightenment to the masses. Todorov is not preoccupied with this. He wants to study structure. In fact, I do not believe he is like the Romantics at all. He seems to be all about a scientific approach, and why is that bad. He even speaks to those who may want to separate science and literature by acknowledging their objection and saying that the novel is a "living thing, all one and continuous, like any other organism...[he] thinks that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts" (2101). There is a structure where parts make up the whole and those must be studied. And why is this hard to accept? How can anyone deny that literature has a structure? And then that that structure can be studied to understand the whole work of literature in relation to others? Really, isnt all study we do in college, in some way, scientific? Think about it. How else can you study some subject without empirical evidence of some sort. We need something tangible, something real to study something else. Even in our religion classes, we study books, we study famous ministers and theologians. We think about and discuss abstract ideas, but do we really study them? I am proposing that the word "study" in and of itself connotes scientific inquiry. Yes, Todorov allows for the importance of theoretical and, say, psychological "study" of literature, but he says there is a hierarchy among them. Ok, I dont know if I agree with this, but I do agree that study of structure is essential and scientific because we study the concrete of poetics. Todorov says on pg. 2105 that "literature becomes only a mediator, a language, which poetics uses for dealing with itself." We can clearly use poetics (ex. of plot in Decameron) to understand an organic connection, similarity, unity in structure of many plots in literature. We understand this. As I read about the examples in Decameron I thought to myself, This is exactly what I've done in all my English classes. This is how we talk about literature.

But then I asked, Why is it important? I already know this stuff. I already know that structure is important.

Maybe I asked this question because I live in a postmodern 20th century world where structuralism has come.....and still remains. At least traces of it, I think. We never just talked about our "feelings" towards this poem or that novel in my English classes. We studied the structure, and, let's hope, it was an objective study like Todorov demands it must be. So, yeah, we've already been doing this, and maybe because of Todorov and the other structuralists.

But... the one major thing I can think to criticize is his search for a universal grammar of narrative. I like the question Karen brought up in class about what Todorov would say to postmodern literature, with its fragmented and experimentative structure. With time, comes change, naturally, but did Todorov realize this? It seems that after the Tower of Babel happened (I believe it did, yes), humans have had this idealistic desire to become unified once more, and we have tried this in different ways. Todorov is doing it with a push for a universal grammar of narrative. Did he really believe it would work? Was he formulating it with an ethnocentric approach, only through the lense of his own education and his own experience, even that of his own circle of intellectual contemporaries? What would he say to how different Africans approach literature analysis? Or the Chinese? Or Native Americans? Do they matter?